The three main actors in GoodFellas have seemingly similar acting styles, but if one were to look at their acting career; Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, and Joe Pesci do have some dissimilarities. Ray Liotta and Joe Pesci can be classified as personality actors and Robert De Niro as a wild card; all of whom can not be denied they are stars as well. Ray Liotta and Joe Pesci too often correlated and regulated to hard-nosed, tough guy, or shady characters in films. They seem to be very talented individuals with the mindset that, of the two, Ray Liotta seems to be the one pegged as the wise guy/rough neck character for movies. I will defend this a bit as he did play a great role as Shoeless Joe Jackson in Field of Dreams. In regards to these individuals and GoodFellas, their acting skills seemed to be the utilization of realistic acting.

Scene: Now go home and get your shinebox

This scene showed the actors intensity and devotion to their assigned character! Martin Scorsese, might I add, also allowed for the actors to ad-lib which made a greater impact for them to immerse themselves into their roles without having to remember lines and gave them the freedom to ‘become’ their characters.

Of the three actors, Robert De Niro is the actor that seems to challenge and immerse himself into any role that he takes on. Goodykoontz and Jacobs (2011) state, “the Method requires that actors draw on their own memories and experiences to reach the heart of a character, so that they more genuinely feel the emotions they’re portraying instead of just pretending to” (3.7). It can be inferred that he sacrifices his own individuality while maintaining the integrity of his acting style to make most of his films highly sought after.

The three basic categories of film sound—dialogue, sound effects, and music—require careful balance to serve the story; because of this, each category is typically recorded separately and mixed together during the final editing process (Goodykoontz & Jacobs, 2014).

The film I have chosen to discuss this week is The Great Gatsby which was released in 2013. It was directed by Baz Luhrmann and starred Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, and Joel Edgerton.

Assess the impact of sound in establishing the theme.

The Great Gatsby was centered around the 1920’s so the music that was used for the movie was of the Jazz genre which gave the theme a 20’s feel.

How does the use of sound inform the mood of the scene, or the film overall?

By using Jazz music for the parties and meetings throughout the film and using different sound effects for the fast car scenes, the use of sound helped the audience to feel more involved in the film. Voice over dialogue was also used to fill the audience in on what is happening at times in the film.

Can you identify specific sounds in your film that allow you to infer a particular genre?

The orchestrated sound mixed with the jazz sound helps this film to identify with the dramatic romance genre with which it belongs.

Since each category of sound may produce a range of effects, how might you characterize the effects in your film?

When watching the film it is amazing to see and especially hear the car that Gatsby drives. Wayne Pashley stated that “15 or so vintage vehicles were recorded”(Farley, 2013) in order to get the best realistic sound for the scenes where the car was seen speeding.

Assess how the scene or sequence would play differently if you changed or removed a key category of sound.

Jay-Z was the executive producer for the music used and he did a great job. Where some would have used their own music from the current age, Jay-Z mixed his music and the music of the other artists and infused it with the sounds from the Jazz age. If music from today was used the entire mood and theme of the film wouldn’t have been as exciting and fascinating as it was.